Sunday, April 19, 2015

It keeps trying to make an appearance, one day of sun and a bit of heat, the days and days of cold, even a few snow flurries and rain. This time last year we were sitting on the porch eating ice cream and strawberries. I want spring to start.

But it's edging closer, some of my garlic that didn't take last year has sprouted this year. I have one lone daffodil that has bloomed. The trees are starting to bud, but it still feels like it's not really happening yet.

Last weekend we got lucky on Saturday for a friend's birthday party. It was partially outdoors and the sun came out, so 18 riotous kids had a chance to burn some energy at Villa Elfvik, a fave place our ours.

This is what it looks like in the forest near our house, just not quite feeling the spring bloom yet.

Discovered another gem near the house. A riding school: Tuomarinkylän Ratsastuskoulu. They have riding classes and clubs, but they also have a Sunday drop-in pony riding. It's not cheap, but what is in Finland. 10 euros for about 15 minutes of riding a pony down a path with someone holding a lead. Not exciting, but a nice introduction. As it's only 5 minutes down the road we can get there early and Bump is a happy girl. We might look into lessons later on.

A bit of good news though. Foo got into the primary school we wanted. It's only 5 minutes away and we should be able to get help with travel as I will have 3 different schools/nurseries to hit twice a day next year. I'll update more once I've had a visit to the school in May.

But I think he's more than ready. Once again I thank my lucky stars that we're in Finland and they delay starting primary school until kids are 7. He's finally got a bit of fine motor control in his hands and is quickly learning Finnish phonetics. I need to work more on English though.

On Friday I saw this picture he drew at his nursery and I wanted to weep. It looks like what it is supposed to and it he did all by himself. It's him and his big brother. My school boys, growing up way too fast.

Monday, April 6, 2015

Easter has kind of snuck up on me this year. I didn't get any witches' wands made for Palm Sunday, didn't get the grass planted. Don't even ask about spring cleaning.

But this long weekend has been lovely. We managed a nice balance of keeping the kids busy and active and having some time for us all to rest and chill as well. Our relax days happen to coincide with Pudding having bad nights. She's sleeping through most nights unless she's having a bad teething episode or is ill, so it hurts more when she's up for hours or really early. Friday, she and I was in desperate need of a long nap after a really bad night.

Saturday we went to Merimailmaa (Sea Life). It was its usual fast-paced, expensive fun. They've added a few new things, some of which a Scottish friend of ours worked on, we had some pleasant surprises. And it was Pudding's first chance to actually walk and have an explore which she loved, but which exhausted us.

Though we didn't do many Easter crafts we did dye Easter eggs. I even had a go at natural dyes with turmeric, purple cabbage and red onions along with our regular food colouring. Inspiration and instructions from here.

I may have also dyed some muslins and bibs bright yellow which then bleed onto some cleaning cloths and nappy wipes with the first proper wash. Oops.

Sunday's Easter Egg hunt seemed to be over in a a flash, but it seems to be dragging on a bit. It snowed the night before so it looks like the Easter bunny started to hide eggs inside, but then decided that the snow would be mostly gone in the morning. He seemed to forget where he had hidden most of them, so we're still finding eggs outside and in. Hopefully we'll find them all soon.

Pudding quite enjoyed her first hunt, but was more into eating all the chocolate. The other kids weren't that bothered with it, so she kept hoovering it up and dropping bit on the heated floor.

Mouse had another hunt with some school friends, again he was so quick finding all his eggs that he was a bit disappointed.

Today we went to Fallkulla Farm with some friends. It was absolutely jumping, so much even the kids weren't that interested in seeing the animals in the barn because there were so many people you couldn't move. We'll have to find a local place to go pony riding because Bumptious was quite upset we weren't willing to wait in the huge queue to ride on a real pony for 3 minutes. The weather was lovely and we arranged to meet up with some friends there, so the kids got a few hours of burning lots of energy.

I'll leave you with my girls all dressed up for Easter. They've become quite the pair.